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When my son Laci was 7 years old I had a thought that my son shouldn’t have two roots. I would raise him as a Jew, and I wouldn’t allow any kind of deviation from this. Well, at the Dohany Street synagogue there was a shammash, he has died, he was called Uncle Zoldan. I sent my son to this certain shammash and asked him to be so kind to teach him. He taught him Hebrew, and they didn’t learn the Talmud, but they did learn the Torah. He learned the basics and learned that we didn’t pray and live like the others. That we had to do what the Torah prescribed. And that we must try to observe what we can. Then my son asked why we didn’t live as I was written there. Why wasn’t our household kosher. We discussed it and I told him that because we couldn’t afford it. A kosher household cost a lot of money. So my son was completely aware of who he was and what was it that we didn’t observe but we should have, already when he went to middle school.
Otherwise in our family we didn’t celebrate any holidays which were not Jewish at all, Christmas tree, Easter egg dying. We observed the Jewish holidays, on Friday evenings we went to the synagogue, lit Chanukkah candle, we even held the Seder and the Passover dinner, and when my son could already play the guitar he accompanied the songs. Otherwise he never missed the Christian holidays, he was a very conscious little Jewish child. Though we didn’t have him circumcised when we should have had to, because we were afraid that he would be exposed to aggression at school. But it wasn’t a problem in any of his schools that he was Jewish. Partly because he was a very good mathematician, and he was good at the other subjects, too, and he was good also at sports, so we can say that he was popular. Our son Gyuri wasn’t circumcised either, because we found out already before he was born that he wasn’t going to be healthy and that he would have to live at an institute, and didn’t want him to have problems because of this. Though Laci wasn’t circumcised he did have his bar mitzvah exceptionally, with his good connections, and at the age of 26 he organized the circumcision ceremony and a doctor circumcised him here in the apartment. About 10 people came with all that was needed for the prayer and everything that was needed, and the circumcision happened as if Laci had been born then, and he got his Hebrew name, Dan, at that time.
Otherwise in our family we didn’t celebrate any holidays which were not Jewish at all, Christmas tree, Easter egg dying. We observed the Jewish holidays, on Friday evenings we went to the synagogue, lit Chanukkah candle, we even held the Seder and the Passover dinner, and when my son could already play the guitar he accompanied the songs. Otherwise he never missed the Christian holidays, he was a very conscious little Jewish child. Though we didn’t have him circumcised when we should have had to, because we were afraid that he would be exposed to aggression at school. But it wasn’t a problem in any of his schools that he was Jewish. Partly because he was a very good mathematician, and he was good at the other subjects, too, and he was good also at sports, so we can say that he was popular. Our son Gyuri wasn’t circumcised either, because we found out already before he was born that he wasn’t going to be healthy and that he would have to live at an institute, and didn’t want him to have problems because of this. Though Laci wasn’t circumcised he did have his bar mitzvah exceptionally, with his good connections, and at the age of 26 he organized the circumcision ceremony and a doctor circumcised him here in the apartment. About 10 people came with all that was needed for the prayer and everything that was needed, and the circumcision happened as if Laci had been born then, and he got his Hebrew name, Dan, at that time.
Period
Location
Hungary
Interview
Ferenc Leicht